I have just switched to supporting Asset Management in our organization. Looking for opinions or real-world experiences for the following:

Are Asset Management and Configuration Management the same? How do they overlap? How do they differ?

I have my own beliefs and have the ITIL opinion (I am Manager's/Master's Certified). Just wanted to gather some data to take to my manager and our Config Manager to help get them on the same page. I need more than just my own opinions.

Asset management is focused on managing a financial and physically tangible item (may include IT and non-IT items) during its lifetime in the organisation and its archive information for financial reporting purposes.
Configuration management encompasses asset management of physical items but also logical or virtual items and their relationship to one another.

For example: Asset management would be focused on a single item (lets say a Personal Computer), its financials, vendor & warranty information, location, status over its lifetime. Configuration Management would encompass all of the asset managment information and those items related to the Personal computer - where it is connected into the network, what periperals are connected to it, what software or objects are installed on it, what customer uses it, any operating documentation, etc.

Therefore, asset management would be a sub component of Configuration management.

There is a significant amount of planning required before attempting to implement a Configuration management tool. Some of the main activities include:
1. Determining the scope of the CMDB - what to include, exclude from the database, and at what point the item would be managed by the CMDB
2. Designing a data model which outlines the attributes of each item you wish to include and any relationships between items that need to be available
3. Develop your high level service catalogue to map the importance of configuration items to the services they support
4. Plan a staged approach to collecting and migrating data into the tool, based on its priority and the needs of other processes such as Change and Incident Management
5. Assign an owner and configuration management team who will be responsible for ongoing audit and management of the data
6. Develop a management process which tracks new, changed or decomissioned items and define the roles and responsibilities of each group involved in the process
7. Implement and customise your tool
8. Follow your staged migration of data into the new tool

Use the ITIL Service Support book as a guide to the level of detail you will need to adopt for each.

My own belief (based on my interpretation and understanding of ITIL) is that an asset comes to life as a result of providing a product or service. If an asset (or CI for that matter) cannot be tied back directly to the production of a product or service, why do you have it? I know the argument is that a company needs some assets and processes to conduct the management and governance of production. However, I see this as being the "overhead" of producing a product or service, and thus it factors into the overall TCO for a product or service.

The lifecycle begins at the moment you start tracking the purchased product.

If you have an integrated purchasing and tracking system, you might start tracking the asset upon order/purchase, thru delivery, in stock, implementation, repair, decomission, disposal.

If you only start tracking an asset once it is delivered by a supplier (and asset tagged) then the lifecycle is shorter.

The lifecycle of an asset usually begins at the point when it is uniquely tagged and ends when the tag is removed and the item disposed of. Asset management should be carried out during this timeframe of the item.

One way I look at Configuration Management (Config Mgmt) is it is Asset Management on steroids.

Let me qualify by referring to IT assets. I am sure many organizations lease their IT assets. So the start of the asset lifecycle occurs before the actual purchase. There are lease and support contracts that need to be negotiated, etc. This information should also be related to the asset and are normally prepared and signed before the assets arrive on site.

Config Mgmt provides the relationships not only to other IT assets, but also to people and services.

You need to identify how you are using assets, and what you wish to track in them. You also need to do the same for CI's you wish to track in your CMDB. Some asset information may overlap with your CI info. You would need to find where the overlap is and then decide what you wish to do with the information that doesn't overlap.

I have not seen any tools that have a combimed IM, PM, CM, Config M, and all the accounting general ledgers under one product. If someone knows of one, I would be interested in hearing about it.

While I agree with Tania definitions of Asset Management and Configuration Management, I have to differ on Asset being a sub-component of Config. While I understand that financial information such as licensing, depreciation, warranties, etc may be attributes of a physical CI, the processes within each process (Asset and Config) are such that I see them as two distinct processes just sharing some information.